Aftershocks
by nightlockcurse
Summary: It only took one word; one word sent the entire fate of Panem spiraling down a hole towards an abyss that led to nowhere. Questioning the president is risky enough, even when she was not directly within his clutches, but she was right underneath of him, daring him to do something about her rebellious behavior. It was an honor for the Mockingjay to die in such a way.
1. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**

~the last place we left off~

It only took one word; one word sent the entire fate of Panem spiraling down a hole towards an abyss that led to nowhere. She had said, "Why?" She had questioned the president. Questioning the president is risky enough, even when she was not directly within his clutches, but she was right underneath of him, daring him to do something about her rebellious behavior. The glint in her eyes, that single spark that could set a fire like a match on a line of gasoline, it was an honor for the Mockingjay to die in such a way.

She was right when she told the president that the Capitol was fragile enough to be taken down by a handful of berries.

Capitol newspapers, district news-boards, televisions, anything to get the word out: they were all swarmed with the news of Katniss Everdeen's death. The Capitol began to see Snow's true colors: a murdering, heartless tyrant. Credit given to Snow, he convinced like it was easy as buttering toast. The Capitol people are still within his clutches, his power was never taken away, he was never overthrown, all because he convinced the people.

Katniss, on the other hand, was not so lucky.

He took the arrow she aimed at him, deadly and aimed directly at his right eye. He walked right up to her bow and ripped the arrow out of the shaft. He questioned her choices. She questioned his sanity. He refused to admit to anything negative. She refused to surrender. He got fed up with her rebellious streak. She got an arrow in her neck.

Snow convinced the Capitol citizens that he had killed Katniss "for a greater good." He convinced the Capitol citizens that Katniss was the enemy, said she would have brought down the entire Capitol and given the districts free-reign. He had the citizens convinced that "free-reign," means complete and utter chaos.

The districts were immediately placed under even tighter supervision, especially the rebel districts: Four, Seven, and Twelve. The rebel victors were to remain under the president's supervision at the Presidential Mansion until the time came to train tributes for the Annual Hunger Games. The victors still remain under the control of the president, but things had not gone as according to President Snow's plans nor commands.

Peeta Mellark became the solo mentor for the District 12 tributes. First year mentoring, he had no partner. All the other surviving rebel victors, Finnick, Haymitch, and Johanna, helped Peeta as much as they could, but no one had the heart to try anymore. Without Katniss, their moods were no longer happy. The hijacking President Snow had previously inflicted upon Peeta took its toll by turning the once caring and loving boy into an emotionless shell of what he used to be before Katniss left him.

Haymitch Abernathy was moved from the District 12 mentor team to the District 11 mentor team to make up for the lack of eligible victors. However, he thought he had a win with Katniss and Peeta, his star-crossed lovers, and, although he would never admit it out loud, he cared for the two of them like they were his family. Losing Katniss was the final straw. He gave up on trying to lessen his drinking and dove head-first into it again. He was of no state to mentor anyone into victory ever again. He was barely even alive.

Johanna Mason was, perhaps, the most stable of the remaining rebel victors. She had all of her emotions, although they were not always in check. She was more prone to tears and angry outbursts, and no one could blame her. She could form coherent thoughts, though they were usually angry and murderous towards President Snow for how terribly he ripped apart her family. Her best friends were either dead or acted so much like the dead that he could be.

Finnick Odair was the most broken of all of the remaining rebel victors. So completely destroyed, he had no hope of revival. His heart so completely shattered, there was no glue strong enough to piece him back together, to whom he used to be. The only thing that held him together was his Annie, and her death was the only this strong enough to break him.

After Katniss was killed, President Snow was terrified of the rebels who he could not control: the ones in District 13. He sent one hovercraft carrying one bomb to the district. The single, very carefully placed bomb set off all of District 13's nuclear storage. The district was searched everywhere for anything and everything valuable for either side of the Uprising.

There were no survivors.

When word arrived to the Capitol, the four remaining rebel victors, Peeta, Haymitch, Johanna, and Finnick, were standing in Snow's office. A guard walked in, bringing the news of District 13. President Snow showed nothing but poorly hidden glee, while Peeta, Haymitch, and Johanna showed shock, unbelief of what had happened. And Finnick went off the deep end.

He grabbed a pen off the president's desk, tried to kill himself. The others knew what he was trying to do. They stopped him. Finnick hasn't spoken since that day. President Snow realized that Finnick wasn't ready to return to his duties from before the failed Uprising. He sent the others into Finnick's previous position; he sent Finnick to "wait" in a cell, the same cell his Annie was in before she was rescued. But there was no rescue for Finnick. President Snow believed that a month or two for Finnick to grieve would be enough before he could return to his duties with his fellow victors.

However, two years in the cell did nothing but kill Finnick very slowly. He still didn't speak. When he was let out to mentor tributes, Finnick would just lie on the couch, crying his heart out for the loss of his love and his unborn child. After the 76th Games, just four months after the news of District 13, Finnick's body was no longer functional.

Finnick thought that, if he were still alive when Annie was dead, there would be an empty void in his heart, that he would be absolutely nothing. But instead, he felt almost completely whole. Almost.

When the 77th Games came around, passing in a blur of tears and heartbreak, Johanna Mason made her escape while her train to District 7 stopped for fuel in District 3. She was aboard when it stopped, and when it arrived in District 7, carrying the newest victor, she was still alive, but she was not alive. Her escape was much the same as Haymitch Abernathy's the previous year. The two of them both died, Johanna of a train malfunction, Haymitch of alcohol. No one knows where they were hiding, and no one could doubt their stories because they were put together and executed so well. However, President Snow and Finnick were the only ones to know the truth.

They never died.

President Snow couldn't just put out wanted posters for it would cause a riot or, better for the rebels, another Uprising. He couldn't draw attention to the fact that people could escape his clutches. It would refill the hope of people in the districts to know that two more victors escaped. It was better for the citizens of Panem to think that they had died at the hands of the Capitol, like all the other victors did.

After Johanna managed to escape, even stricter rules were implemented towards the only two remaining rebel victors. Peeta was no longer allowed to return home under any circumstances, not that he ever did anyways. His emotions and his hijacking never mixed well with the memories of his old home. Finnick, who was slowly dying of a broken heart and sea deprivation, was not allowed to return home either. He received daily questionings from President Snow himself about when he might have been ready to "revisit" the Capitol's paying population. Finnick did nothing but sit and mourn the loss of his wife and their unborn child. It was the same every single day.

When Finnick reached the point by the 78th Hunger Games that he could no longer move himself at all, President Snow relented and sent him back to District 4 for one week after the Games. Finnick spent his entire week in the ocean, his mother coming by three times a day to make sure that he ate and drank. When the train came back for him, Finnick could move himself, although he was still wrapped inside of a vortex of darkness and despair. President Snow relented and agreed to let Finnick return home for one week each year.

The victor of the 78th Hunger Games was the younger brother of Finnick's best friend as a child. At 18, he was as much of a rebel as Finnick once was. During his Victory Tour, however, he was kidnapped. When the peacekeepers found the boy, on his way back to the ocean in District 4, they brought him to the Capitol. They attempted to draw the kidnappers out of hiding by murdering the victor publicly, but to no avail. The boy died, and President Snow was no closer to finding out who kept helping rebels escape.

With only two remaining rebel victors, one slowly succumbing to death by broken heart, the other losing his humanity, and three non-rebel victors, Enobaria and the naïve victors of Districts 7 and 2, by the time the 79th Hunger Games draws near, it seems as though the Capitol has won, yet again.

But on the newly smoldering remains of District 13, a petite figure stood with an army ready to strike and an almost foolproof plan at her fingertips. The figure looked up, waiting for the signal from her head captain to put her plan into action.

When she saw the unmistakable black and white wings of a mockingjay fly over her head and drop the bottle in front of her feet, she smiled to herself. What was in that bottle was the first step to the final phase of her plan to rescue her family and end the reign of Coriolanus Snow.

Picking up the bottle, she pulled the note out of it. _This is where our new hope begins, _she thought to herself. Committing the note to memory (It really wasn't long at all.), she pulled a small lighter out of her small back bag and set the note on fire. "If we burn, you burn with us," she said loudly, but there was no one around to hear her. She chuckled quietly to herself. It had become quite a joke back at boot camp.

Turning around, she walked west towards her new destination, towards District 7. She needed to meet with some old friends in order to put her new Revolution into action.

"This is the kind of crazy we need in this world," she said to herself once again, "the kind willing to do anything necessary."

She would never turn her back on her family, but she was ready to start something so dangerous that there was no telling who would survive. But she wasn't worried. She knew they wouldn't care. She didn't either. They were going to possibly kill themselves for the future of Panem, and that was okay by them.

"Whoever said that there was something wrong with being crazy is crazy."

**DISCLAIMER: All plots prior to this story's belong to Suzanne Collins and whoever else is associated with the trilogy. All I did was throw a twist onto the end of _Mockingjay. _The words written here do happen to be from my brain. Props to whomever can guess the song from which the lyrics at the top come from. Those aren't mine either.**


	2. Backs to the Wall

CHAPTER 1:

Backs to the Wall

~they've managed to get rid of me~

In the outskirts of District Seven, hidden far enough into the line of trees that no lumberjacks could accidentally find, Johanna Mason lives in a camouflaged cabin in a peaceful kind of silence. The only external sounds she hears in her cabin are the rustle of leaves in the wind. She hardly ever goes outside, leaving market trips to her roommate, who is better suited to the undercover work required to be an escaped rebel victor on the run and supposedly dead.

Johanna had always wanted peace and quiet from the moment she was reaped back before the war. As a victor, she craved the silence even more. However, now that she has the steady and undisturbed life she always dreamed of, her memories will not leave her alone. They haunt her, staying with her as she eats, as she cleans, as she sits at her favorite spot on the window in the kitchen. She now craves the action she had during the war, craves the activities that kept her mind active. She has nothing now. She is left to her past.

She does, however, have something to worry her mind from time to time. There is the possibility that she will be found. People will have to eventually find out that she did not, in fact, die, and she is pretty certain that Snow knows that she is alive. He has never trusted her, even told her that she was a poor influence on the victor population. Snow told her that she should not spend time with the other victors for he feared that they would all develop a rebellious streak and disobey his rules with no consequences. And then Katniss came along and chipped his plan yet again. And then he killed her.

There was a sort of timeline of rebellion, a kind of joke among the victors.

Haymitch started it during the 50th Hunger Games, using what was supposed to be a hazard as a tool, an advantage. He was not the first to defy the Capitol, but he was the first to achieve some kind of reaction from the Capitol. He was the first to place the first bomb of a new beginning in their pathetic little brains.

Beetee was added next. He was more of a silent rebel, a strategist and planner. He was a rebel like he was a fighter, silent yet deadly. He appeared obedient, at the will of the president. Yet, underneath all of the brilliance lay even more brilliance and a plan to help his fellow rebels. His intelligence was what helped the victors to achieve so much during the war, and he was what made the war so possible for the rebels.

Then Finnick appeared. He didn't physically start anything during his games, the 65th, but he was the youngest victor to win, and it brought a little bit of humanity to the Capitol population. He was also the most dedicated to his family and the most popular. His rebellion, however, didn't start until Annie was reaped.

They were best friends when they were younger, inseparable. After Finnick won, many of his friends left him because they saw him as the Capitol wanted them to see him: a murderer. But there were a few who stayed by Finnick, Annie included. After Finnick turned 16 and Snow began to sell him, everyone else left him, believing that he was a Capitol whore. Everyone left him to fend for himself, Annie excluded. She knew he was a good person, knew he wouldn't do something like that without a reason. Or a threat. She was the only person to remember him from before he was reaped. His own family even pushed him away. They didn't understand that he was doing what he did to save them. Of course, he could never tell them that, and that killed him each and every day.

When Annie was pulled into the deadly circle of the Games, Finnick was determined to save her. When he did manage to rescue her from the Arena, he didn't know how to save her from the aftermath. He was so desperate and out of ideas. Until he actually saw her, that is. She was so terrified of everything. She hadn't actually gone crazy; Finnick only decided to play up the terror she felt a little bit so that she wouldn't actually go crazy. He couldn't stand the idea of his best friend in his position. It took little arguing on Finnick's part before Annie agreed to his crazy scheme. Her rebellious attitude was hidden, and she was left alone. For the most part.

Johanna had many qualities that the other rebels had: hatred, defiance, and intelligence. Yet she had some that were all her own: a smartass attitude, pure hatred, deception, and no family. She won purely to prove it to herself and the parents she had back home who didn't want her that she was capable of doing something productive. She led them on, making them believe that she was worthless, and then she went at it like an axe maniac, pun intended. Snow was very displeased with her about how well she could deceive others. It made him just a little too wary of her. And then her family was gone just because she wouldn't submit to him like he wanted. It was all Snow could do not to kill Johanna every time he saw her. She was on-track for the Arena the second time as long as Finnick and Haymitch and Annie and Beetee had been. If Peeta and Mags hadn't volunteered for Haymitch and Annie, they may have lost two of their most valuable rebels too early on. But, they did lose Annie far too early on anyways.

Finally, Katniss was added to the Timeline of Rebellion. The nightlock she had worried the president even more than Haymitch's force field, Beetee's brilliance, Finnick's love for Annie, Annie's madness, and Johanna's deception all put together. He knew that Katniss had the capability to bring down the Capitol once and for all given the right encouragement and pushes from a few not-so-obedient victors.

The timeline unraveled so quickly; all of their hard work was gone. Katniss died so quickly that she never even learned of the timeline that she completed. There was just not enough time to do everything before she died so unfairly.

Her mind has been full of worry recently, though it was the only thing, other than her nightmares, that she could focus on. She worries relentlessly about Finnick and how little she can do for him. She hopes and wishes every day that Peeta finds some kind of a heart in his screwed up body and mind to check on Finnick every once in a while to make sure that he hasn't unintentionally (and rather intentionally) killed himself. Finnick has so little time left before he succumbs to the absolute madness threatening to slit his throat. She needs to do something, but Annie is the only one with the power to resurrect Finnick, and she is also the cause of Finnick's current state. When she died, Finnick's only alive family died along with her. Annie Odair died in the final bombing of District 13 five months pregnant.

Johanna sighs as she looks out the window at the rainy, early Sunday morning. At four in the morning deep in the woods of District 7, the rain hits the trees above her cabin before it hits her roof. There is no specific pattern to the rain fall, but Johanna manages to find a rhythm. The rhythm brings back a memory from her past, one of the very rare pleasant memories she has left.

Sunday morning, rain is falling.

Steal some cover, share some skin.

She smiles at the memory. It was a song Finnick wrote for her and sang to her when she complained about the rainy autumn weather in Seven. Johanna never liked storms; they always stirred up her past with her horrible excuse for a family. Her drunk father would always be home during storms because the only bar would be closed for some stupid reason. Her bitchy mother would scream at him until they ended up in their bedroom together, which was right next to Johanna's bedroom. Her "perfect" brother would always be at a friend's house. Johanna had no friends to stay with. She was always the outcast. She was always alone on storm nights. Johanna never slept on stormy nights.

When she met Finnick, however, he wrote the song for her, reminding her that she wasn't the only person who had the family who didn't love her. Almost all of the other victors were like that. Their families despised them for what they did, even though they did what they did to protect.

But things just get so crazy, living life gets hard to do.

And I would gladly hit the road, get up and go if I knew.

That someday it would lead me back to you.

That someday it would lead me back to you.

She has to admit it, she misses Finnick. She misses the way he made her laugh when she was having a bad day, the way he could make her feel better with just a look. She wishes that she could run to his cell in the Capitol and do the same for him, but she can't. She is dead and doesn't believe that she has the capability that he had to make it seem as though everything is alright. She wasn't in love with him; his heart was solely for Annie. Johanna was never the kind of girl who had a lot of friends, and, even though it did have a lot of downfalls, becoming a victor was probably the greatest thing that ever happened to her.

She may have lost her blood family, but it wasn't a huge loss. They were disappointed in her before and after she won. Besides, she gained an even better family at the expense of her other family. Her victor family and she connected on such a deep level, they all became one person. It was closer than a friendly bond or a physical bond; it was an emotional bond that brought them all together and would not ever let them go. It went deeper than love. It was the most important thing to ever hit their hearts.

Looking to the clock, she sees that she has been sitting in her favorite kitchen spot by the window for over three hours. Her nightmare woke her up. It was one of the worst that she has gotten since the news of District 13. In it, she was alone. All of the other victors had died in the final bombing of District 13, and she was facing Snow's wrath alone. He brought all of her victor family back from the dead only to violently murder them again. She remembers everything perfectly, as if it did truly happen. Finnick had a trident straight through his neck, Annie was held underwater for too long and drowned, Haymitch was thrown against a force field multiple times, and Katniss had her heart speared by an arrow and removed from her chest.

The images will not leave her alone, so she sits next to the rain, hoping that it puts her to sleep, but, as always, her luck fails her, and she relives graphic memories. The visions of her nightmares scream at her, the visions of her past scream at her, visions of the future scream at her. Everything screams at her, and she does her best not to scream back and wake her roommate.

Johanna finds it a little funny how President Snow knows how to manipulate the victors so perfectly. He knows that if he threatens the victors themselves, the victors don't care, but when he goes after their loved ones, he can get the victors to do just about anything. He doesn't hurt the victors directly, but, by hurting their loved ones, it, in turn, hurts the victors themselves.

And hurt victors are just off what Snow feeds. Their sufferings fuel his fire, his desire for blood. And he is at his highest point. The pain and suffering from Peeta and Finnick are enough to keep Snow going for the rest of the Age of the Capitol. Depending on how quickly Johanna can get her act together and actually put some kind of a second rebellion together, that could take another 75 years. She needs support, and her roommate's support isn't enough. She needs Annie. She needs Katniss. She needs Peeta. And most importantly, she needs Finnick. The support she needs the most is also the most unattainable. Another poor twist of luck hits Johanna. Finnick has no way of escaping the Capitol this time. There is no rescue crew on the way to save him. And, even if he does manage to escape, he would still be shattered beyond repair. Annie is not going to come back from the dead with a child to save him. The victors of have run out of miracles. The only way for Finnick to possibly escape is for him to truly die, which he wasn't too far from when Johanna left. He could be dead now for all she knows, which is what scares her the most. President Snow is most likely keeping as close an eye on Finnick and Peeta as he can, making sure that the remaining of his rebel victors don't team up with the other escaped ones.

Wouldn't want another Uprising, now would we? she thinks to herself. The Capitol is probably too bruised to handle another one just yet, right?

Knowing that she surely isn't too bruised to go into battle again, mostly because she didn't even fight in the previous Uprising, Johanna thinks again about creating her own army from the rebels of District 7. She quickly squashes the idea as much as she can. There is no way that they can overpower all of the peacekeepers in Seven. Ever since she made her escape, peacekeeper numbers raised by at least 40%. President Snow, no doubt, ordered them to remain in the district until Johanna was found. And the same was probably done for Haymitch back in District 12, even though Johanna knows that he is not there.

Johanna wonders what would happen if she were caught by the peacekeepers. Would they kill her on sight? Or would they bring her back to the Capitol?

No way in hell am I going back there, she thinks. You'll have to kill me to get me back there.

She'd like to stand up to the Capitol, but there are too many obstacles for her to get past before she can even have help to overcome the rest. But, at the moment, she can't do anything but sit and wait for some kind of miracle to happen. Even if her roommate helps her out, which he no doubt will, they won't be able to get half-way to the Capitol without being captured.

Deciding that the rain is of no help to putting her to sleep, Johanna looks at the clock once more before heading back upstairs to her bedroom. 3:56 A.M. and she has only gotten two hours of sleep so far tonight. Johanna only plans to get one more hour in before another nightmare takes her. She's used to surviving the days on very few hours of sleep. Her days consist of cleaning, reading, freaking out, and the occasional fifteen minute nap.

She stands from her perch on the window, her legs stiff from being curled up in a ball underneath of her for so long. She stretches her back out, which is also stiff. Her right foot has fallen asleep after not moving for over three hours. Johanna cracks her knuckles on her fingers, bringing some feeling back into them. It was cold by the window, and she now wishes that she had grabbed a sweater before leaving her room. She didn't feel the cold until now; her whole body had gone numb until now, and the cold settles in. Johanna's hiding place in Seven is so far north that the fall weather temperatures can drop rather drastically. Her warm bed has never looked so comforting.

When she reaches the stairs, the bottom one creaks, as always. Only two steps up, she hears another sound, only this one did not come from the stairs. Or from Johanna, for that matter.

As a rebel, living in secret, waiting for the day when someone does eventually find you, knocks on doors can be very fatal. If you open it and a peacekeeper squad comes in, you're screwed. If you don't open it and there's a peacekeeper squad on the other side, you're screwed, unless you run. But Johanna cannot run. She is frozen to her spot on the second stair on her way to her warm and cozy bed. This time, the cold air of Seven's autumn air has nothing to do with the chills that run down her spine as another knock pierces the silence of the cabin.

The person or persons on the other side have knocked again, and Johanna still cannot move. How long has she been standing there? Four minutes? Forty minutes?

At four in the morning on a cold, rainy autumn night, it could just be a lost traveler looking for shelter. However, the Capitol increased travel security since Haymitch's death last year. It could be a fellow rebel, but the odds are very, very, very low.

It could be a peacekeeper squad that has finally dared to venture out further and further into the woods of District 7 and found her cabin, thrilled that they finally get to take escaped rebel victor Johanna Mason back to the Capitol for President Snow to torture into oblivion.

It could be Finnick—No. It couldn't. It couldn't be Finnick. Could it? No! Stop thinking like that, Johanna. Do not open that door. She has to know. Could Finnick have escaped?

The reasonable side of her brain knows that it can't, it just cannot be Finnick. Finnick is more likely dead than at her door right now. What she can't figure out is why this person keeps knocking. The normal traveler would have left. The peacekeeper squad would have kicked down the door by now. And it can't be Finnick. It can't! It just cannot possibly be Finnick.

Johanna takes her first step towards the door. The bottom stair creaks again; it seems louder this time than it did last time. Johanna's ears pick up every little sudden sound everywhere. The rain pounding on the roof becomes less prominent as each step's sound rebound off of the walls sounds like a tree falling right next to her cabin and each quick beat of her heart is so loud she is positive that whoever is or was on the other side of her door can hear it. There is no creaking coming from the front of the cabin, indicating that whoever is on the other side of the door is not shifting and is completely confident of being there, convinced of being in the right place at the right time. The closer that she gets to the door, the faster her heart beats, the dryer her mouth feels, the heavier her legs feel, the blurrier the surrounding objects become, the colder the air gets, like there is a ghost on the other side of the door.

As her shaking hand grasps the door knob, she twists it slowly. She wants Finnick to be behind the door, yet she doesn't. It feels like a ghost will appear when she opens the door. She is no longer terrified of a peacekeeper squad or a lost traveler. She is terrified of who has come back to haunt her life.

The shadow underneath the door looks unnatural. There is no moonlight outside. How can there be a shadow? Who has come to torture Johanna like this? She is, however, only torturing herself, taking so long to open the door. She has never been this terrified of anything: not the Games, not the Victory Tour, not the aftermath, not the war, nothing.

The door creaks open, and her worst nightmares come true. It's worse than Finnick standing behind the door, worse than ten squads of peacekeepers with guns all aimed at her. It's even worse than President Snow standing there himself.

She stands there, in dark green cargo shorts and an equally dark green tank top, as if she were trying to blend into the tree tops. Her shorts, hopelessly covered in dirt, look too big for her slim waist. The string has been tied as tight as it can be, with a belt pulled to the tightest loop. They don't even look like women's shorts. There are three sizable holes in her shorts, and many smaller holes. Some of the holes look singed, like they were in a fire, while others look like they have dry blood caked on them. With her arms crossed against her chest, she holds a small device, turned on with the lighting low and the exact location of Johanna's home programmed into it. Next to her is a small pack, filled with who-knows-what. The right shoulder of her tank top is sliced open, a large gash that looks as though it was sewn back together underneath of it. Her tank top is also covered in dirt and holes. Her shirt seems to be in better condition than her shorts; it has less dirt, fewer holes, and it seems to fit her. Various scrapes and bruises litter her once perfect skin. There is one directly under her left eye and above her cheek colored purple and blue that has swollen her eye almost completely shut. Another is on her shoulder, black and green. Her hair, which has been dyed to a platinum blonde color and starting to fade at the roots, revealing her dark hair, is a complete mess behind her head, tied into a sloppy pony tail. On her face, she wears a knowing smirk; one Johanna knows that she has seen before, but on someone else, someone in the Capitol's clutches.

How did she find me? No one could have known that we're here! Johanna screams to herself.

This girl is supposed to be dead. She is supposed to be dead and gone. And she's not a ghost; Johanna knows what ghosts are like. And this girl is not a ghost.

Thousands of questions run through Johanna's mind. She can't speak; she can't move, and she can barely even think straight. She wavers on her spot, forcing herself to say something, to move, but she can only push one phrase past her lips, and even that one question barely comes out as a whisper.

"What the hell?"

The woman laughs at her.

"Good to see you, too, Mason."

~return me to the grave~

"You know, Mr. Odair, I believe that you have gotten better since the last time I saw you."

I can't have gotten better. I know I've only gotten worse.

"How can you still cry? It's been three years. I think you'd be out of tears."

What the hell do you know about tears? Don't you have to be human to experience them?

"Three years you've been in this cell, Finnick. Isn't it time you joined the real world?"

What's real about the world above this cell? There's nothing in the "real" world that I want to see.

"She really wasn't that special, Finnick. I don't know why you loved her so much. She was a broken soul."

What makes you think that you knew her?! She was perfect. She was beautiful inside and out. She was not a broken soul. I am a broken soul.

"Enough with those tears, Mr. Odair. You have twenty-four hours to pull yourself together. You have another client tomorrow."

Metal against metal scrapes into Finnick's head as the chair that sits in the corner of his cell moves back into its original spot. More metal scrapes as the door to his cell opens and closes. They don't bother to lock his cell anymore; they know he has no will or energy to run.

This isn't the first time Snow threatened him with another client. Finnick never moves from his spot. Peeta comes down every day to make him eat and drink and remain moderately healthy. When Snow comes to collect him tomorrow, Finnick won't have to do anything different. He doesn't do anything anymore; there's no point. His lips are sealed shut from dehydration, he is dramatically underweight, his mind is no longer capable of forming a thought that isn't somehow related to his dead wife and child, and his heart is so broken that there is no hope of repair.

He never even knew about the child. He suspects Annie knew and didn't tell him, for whatever reason. But then again, Annie would have told him. She wouldn't have been far along when he left for the Capitol, maybe a month or two. He should have listened to her; he should have stayed in Thirteen and died alongside of her. They could have possibly even won the war if Finnick had not gone along with the other victors. He was part of the reason Katniss died. When they were running, she thought she saw him killed by lizards. He hadn't, but it had been enough to drive her nearer to the edge of insanity. Then she saw her little sister die, and that was the final shove down the chasm of insanity. She risked everything, and it ended up costing the rebels the Uprising.

Then Snow had to go destroy the remaining rebels who he couldn't keep under his control. It pained Snow not to be in charge and in control of everything and everyone. And his Annie was gone forever.

Why Snow just won't kill him now and put him out of his misery is beyond his damaged brain.

Of course, it really is simple. Snow enjoys seeing one of his strongest victors succumb to madness and depression, heartache and heartbreak, despair and helplessness. Snow's morbid obsession with children is more than Finnick can comprehend without passing out from exhaustion.

He can only hope that, if he is lucky enough, his broken heart can kill him faster so that he can visit his wife and child in heaven.

Wishing that he could just hold her once more, he curls even more around himself. It's the first time he's moved in two weeks. His bones and muscles are so stiff. He doesn't care. He wants to open his eyes; they could be open for all he knows, but all he sees is darkness. Annie was the light in his life, and without her, Finnick has no hope for finding another light to live off of. There's no hope for him.

Annie never visits him in his dreams, as though she doesn't want to hurt him even more. He doesn't envision her ghost walking into his cell, doesn't picture her and their baby sitting in the chair in the corner, doesn't feel her pick him up and walk her out the unlocked gate.

With his hands clamped over his ears (Just like Annie used to do, he thinks.), like they have been since he was thrown into the damn cell, he begins to drift off to his land of nightmares, another life without Annie. He hasn't seen her face, in his nightmares nor daymares.

Just as he is about to leave the world of the awake, the cell door opens. Assuming it is Peeta coming down to force food down his throat, he ignores it. It doesn't register in his nonexistent mind that, this time, the door opens as though it is trying not to be heard. He brushes it off as though his ears are losing their will to work, just as well as everything else in his body.

A moment later, familiar arms take him off the cold ground. No sleeves on the arms that throw Finnick over her shoulder. His bones crack as they move majorly for the first time in ages. He feels like a forgotten bicycle that has rusted over after years of no use and then is taken out again for a ride. Sparks ignite off of Finnick's body where her bear skin touches his. He wants this to be real, but he knows it isn't. Or maybe it is, and she has come to take him to heaven. Maybe he is finally dying.

Then why does he feel so alive?

He wants to open his eyes, wants to remember the face of the person rescuing him, so desperately he does. He can't see; he can't move, can't feel anything except for those very few sparks that are waking him up slowly, very, very slowly. Body gone numb, Finnick hangs limp in the arms of the all too familiar stranger.

He knows who it is, can almost picture her face. He wants to remember, needs to remember. The darkness that has been surrounding him for the past three years starts to evaporate as the wind hits his face and his too long hair as the woman starts running. Finnick can almost hear something, something in the distance. It sounds like shouting. Shouting for what, though, Finnick doesn't know. He knows none of the voices.

Finnick groans, the first sound he's made in years. The woman holding him starts running faster, joined by another pair of feet, another larger pair. His pulse starts racing. He knows those feet, too. He knows both of the people running him somewhere, whether to death or to life, Finnick doesn't know. Death seems so much more likely, considering both of these people are dead. Maybe the key to dying is to have your last moments of life be life.

Finnick manages another sound. The woman carrying him quietly shushes him, like a mother would her child. It is full of care and concern. She strokes his hair as they continue to run. They reach the stairs at the end of the long hallway of cells, and they run up before making a quick turn. Finnick is set down on the ground, and he hears a large pack of people run past, what he assumes is, their hiding spot. He hears the two talking about something, an escape plan maybe. His ears have blurred everything out; they did a long time ago. The only reason he knew what Snow was saying was because it's always what the president says. He hears mumbled phrases. Their speaking in whispers doesn't help his poor hearing.

He tries to say her name, tries so damn hard. He immediately regrets not speaking sooner. She leans down and touches his eyes, maybe closing them, maybe opening them; Finnick doesn't know. He rolls towards her; she catches him. It's so damn painful for him to move like that, but he needs to move, needs to leave, needs this to be real.

He knows it can't be happening; he knows he is dying. He should be relieved he's finally dying, but the pain is so much greater than he's experienced since he lost her. He was wrong to want to dream about her. Being in her presence is too much for his shattered heart to handle. He wanted to dream about her, but he was wrong to want that. He wanted what they used to do back in Four: swimming in the dark, taking their boat out for leisure cruises, lying on the beach, and making his life worth living. He didn't want to dream of her death, of her madness, or of her running from danger.

She picks him back up off of the floor, and she and the man begin running again. It isn't before long before more light makes its way into Finnick's darkness.

Hearing a groan from her, Finnick hits the floor. Like his usual nightmares, physical pain is extremely evident. Letting out a troubled breath, seeing as he landed on his stomach, Finnick writhes in pain. He is picked up from the ground, thrown over the other person's shoulder, and they're off running again.

Somewhere along the line, other footsteps fade and disappear, a conversation passing through the two, but Finnick can't catch it. Finnick makes a pathetic sound; he doesn't want her to leave again. His senses are making reappearances. His aural sense returns first, and he catches what his carrier says quietly and out of breath.

"Hang in there, kid," he says. "She wants you safe more than herself."

~who we can't save~

With a towel wrapped around her shoulders, the used-to-be victor sits, perfectly comfortable and soaking wet at Johanna's kitchen table. Johanna can't help but stare.

She is supposed to be dead; her death was all over the news, still is, in fact. She could have brought Snow down to his knees, but, instead, she decided to hide and leave the rest of them to fend for themselves.

What the hell was she doing while she was in hiding, anyways? Johanna hasn't been able to speak since she opened the door and revealed this nightmare, and, even then, she couldn't sit down by herself. She was glad that her voice wouldn't work, because if it did, she would surely scream and wake her roommate, who was having a good night for once.

Johanna shivers, not from cold, but from frustration, from anger, from helplessness, and from thankfulness. She's thankful that the woman sitting across from her is not dead, but she wishes that she knew that she never did die. She wants to punch the woman across the face for not telling anyone that she was safe, but, at the same time, she wants to hug her for being okay, yet she still cannot move, frozen with so many emotions. She's never experienced so many emotions in her life, so, of course, she's terrified when they all hit her head-on at the same time. It gives her a headache worse than she's ever had before.

At least now she has some kind of distraction from her past. And that distraction is her past.

"Look, Jo, I know you want to ask me a trillion questions, but you have to understand why I did it in the first place. And it will probably answer most of your questions."

Johanna snaps her head up, not realizing that it fell down. She looks the girl dead in the eyes, the eyes that she's never seen so clear. She's only ever seen them this clear once, and the cause of that clarity was in the Capitol, heartbroken because he thinks that she is dead.

But she's not dead.

Johanna jumps up out of her chair, knocking it to the ground. She runs over to the wall, searching desperately for the phone, but then remembering that her roommate got rid of it when he moved in because it was a good way for the Capitol to track them. The phone is currently lying among the autumn rain and leaves, smashed, in the backyard.

Reality catches up with her. If she had called the Capitol, they would have known her location, that she is alive, and that the woman in her kitchen didn't truly die. And there is no telling that the message would get to the right person. All in all, calling the Capitol would have done about two hundred percent more harm than good.

Johanna walks back to where she knocked over her chair, picks it up, and then slumps back into it. The woman across the table still sips her coffee as though nothing happened. Johanna was happy that she had sugar cubes in her pantry so that she could offer her guest something to warm her up from the storm. She must have picked up the sugar cube habit from Finnick.

I wonder if she knows how horrible life has become all because of her.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Johanna asks when she finally gets her voice back. The woman puts down her mug to look Johanna straight in the eye.

"I'm having coffee with a friend at four thirty in the morning," she replies with the smartass tone that states the obvious.

"I'm not talking about the damn coffee! I want to know how the hell you found us and how the hell you have hid from all of us for so long!"

Not even a flinch rides through Johanna's friend's body as Johanna screams her lungs out, as Johanna stands up to tower over her petite form, made smaller by sitting in the chair.

"How do you have so much energy this early in the morning?" she asks as though nothing out of the ordinary just happened, even though nothing about this current situation could be considered normal.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me!" Johanna screams again. "You can't just-"

"Jo, pipe down! I was actually getting some sleep tonight!" calls a voice from upstairs.

"Shut it, Haymitch!" Johanna screams back. "This situation is a little bit more serious than your lack of sleep!"

Haymitch Abernathy decides to make his appearance known at this point, walking down the stairs in his boxers and a clean, white, unstained T-shirt. "Look, Jo, just stop yelling at your nightmares again and-" He stops mid-sentence when he sees the woman at the table. Her hair may have been died a different color, a platinum blonde color, but her eyes are the same. Nothing could cover the deep, sea green of her eyes.

"Well do my tired eyes do deceive me, or do we have another rebel victor amongst ourselves?" Haymitch drawls, his voice thick with sleep, not alcohol. He walks closer to the women at the table, holding his hand out to their four A.M. visitor. She puts her hand into his, in a formal way. She is a married woman, after all.

"It's always a pleasure to have an Odair in the room," he says, kissing her hand.

Annie chuckles at his sarcasm, realizing just how much she missed Haymitch and Johanna while she was forming her army. "Nice to see you too, Mr. Abernathy."

Taking a seat in the chair next to Johanna, who sat down after Annie put her hand in Haymitch's, Haymitch stares at Annie, not in adoration, not in puzzlement, but in praise.

"I'm impressed, Odair," he says slowly. "I believe that your death topped ours by a long-shot."

Annie chuckles, missing the old man's humor. "Haymitch, she's been in hiding, like us. She probably doesn't know we 'died,'" Johanna inputs. It takes Haymitch a second to realize what she said, for it is four in the morning. When he does understand what she said, Annie has already rolled her eyes and laughed at their ignorance.

"What's so funny?" both Johanna and Haymitch ask at the same time.

"You two, idiots," Annie replies. "You think that I had no idea that the two of you faked your deaths by climbing off the backs of your trains. Puh-lease. How else would I have found your lovely little home?" Annie says with a wink. "Trust me, I know everything."

Haymitch and Johanna can only stare at her. They thought that they had done a nearly perfect job of hiding themselves from the outside world, but apparently it wasn't close enough to perfect for Annie.

"Don't think I don't know what's happened while I was gone. I know that Katniss died at the hands of President Snow; I saw the experience firsthand. I was practically in the audience, for crying out loud," Annie begins.

Johanna and Haymitch can do absolutely nothing except sit and stare at Annie, questioning everything that she knows, which is, apparently, everything they do not.

Annie can't help but laugh again as she watches their eyebrows raise simultaneously.

"Get comfortable if you want to know that whole story; it's a long one."

**DISCLAIMER: ****All plots prior to this story's belong to Suzanne Collins and whoever else is associated with the trilogy. I just threw a twist onto the end of _Mockingjay_. The words here do happen to come from my brain. Props to whomever can figure out the song from which the lyrics at the top come from and the song that Finnick wrote for Johanna. Those aren't mine either.**


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